to their pensions (like everyone else) and drop the horrid DROP triple-dipping program is flat-out wonderful. It's high time someone derailed the gravy train that government workers have been riding on taxpayers' backs. Scott hasn't been lauded here before, much more the opposite, but this is one policy you have to like (unless you're a government employee). Don't get this wrong -- our public servants deserve to make a good living, but some of the pension policies of late have made some high-ranking bureaucrats millionaires. Inside, read about the Gatorade-smuggling BSO deputy in a piece in which we delve into the dollar amounts paid by some of Broward's most notorious new alleged criminals to get out of jail. Is it fair? Of course not. It's sounds like a joke: A BSO jail guard is arrested on felonies and held on $150,000 bond for smuggling Gatorade in to an inmate. The bond was ultimately reduced by Judge Jay Hurley to $70,000 but it's still too damn high. Former deputy Keith McPhee, who left BSO in November, is also alleged to have brought in batteries and a picture of an inmate's girlfriend, but this is undeniably penny ante stuff.

McPhee and Hutchinson. Guess which one had to pay the man more money to get out of jail.

McPhee and Hutchinson. Guess which one had to pay the man more money to get out of jail.

​But McPhee can't be defended. Why? Because he took cash for his crimes, $600 in total. That's a crime of corruption, which is why McPhee was charged with official misconduct under the bribery statutes (in addition to introducing contraband into the jail).

If the allegations are true, it's a case that had to be made (wow, backing Scott and Lamberti on the same day... weird). But now let's talk about that bond, because it's too high. To prove this, let's look at other public officials/employees who have been charged recently with corruption. Former Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Cindi Hutchinson, who is accused of selling out her city to a controversial developer, was released from jail after posting a bond of just $10,500. Yes, the jail guard who smuggled in a sports drink for some quick cash was given a bond precisely ten times higher than the city commissioner received. Stephanie Kraft, accused of selling out the School Board to give the same developer a $500,000 fee break from taxpayers: $6,500. Patricia Atkins-Grad, accused of selling out Tamarac to a dirty developer in exchange for a leased BMW: $15,500.

Diana Wasserman-Rubin, accused of voting in favor of her husband's written grants for Southwest Ranches: $24,500.

Marc Sultanof, accused of selling out Tamarac to the same dirty developer as Kraft and Atkins-Grad for a Honda Accord: $11,000 bond.

So you add all five of those criminally charged elected officials' bonds together and you get $68,000. That means that McPhee's reduced bond is still more than all of their bonds put together.

Now some might immediately presume institutional racism, and that may be so, but it's surely more about wealth and power than race. For instance, back in 2009, the feds busted Beverly Gallagher, a white woman, and two black elected officials, then-Broward County Commissioner Josephus Eggelletion and former Miramar Commissioner Fitzroy Salesman. Gallagher was let out on a whopping $100,000 bond (the feds are a little more serious when it comes to this stuff). And Eggelletion and Salesman were each released after posting bonds of... uh... $200,000 each.